Israel to World: "Suck It."

A civil rights group representing a small group of people complained that women were being dosed with birth control without knowing it, responsible head of department emphasizes publicly that there is no such program and doctors should be vigilant in response to the concerns.

Totally insane.

If you're going to shutdown a secret government initiative to sterilize an ethnic group, and you decided to broadcast shutting it down to the media in response to accusations from a civil rights group, why would you then deny the program?

Itisamystery.gif

Just deny it completely. You only release the statement he released if you're being a responsible dpt head.

I'm not saying that there isn't dubious shit going on in the reporting, but to call it "insane" is a bit much. Granted your biases are certainly playing a part in my skepticism.

I don't think the reporting is insane. I think the reporting is shameless. I think taking it at face value (esp if you're otherwise a critical news reader) is insane.

If you think people who take 35 testimonies into consideration have a mental disorder, then okay. Kind of offensive, though.

You haven't seen those testimonies. You just have the characterizations of those testimonies of a reporter from Haaretz to rely upon.

If it was a NYT reporter I would feel entirely different.

Yeah, that's where I get my dubiousness from. Still, to say press releases prove once and for all anything seems a bit naive.

goykbe

I'm not saying that some press releases prove anything. I'm arguing that the wisest response to this story is some skepticism until there is more evidence or better sourcing. It is very rare for Western democratic governments to engage in long term eugenics programs (though I admit, not unheard of).

Xpost. No doubt. Still, he called salon reporting this story as true as anti Semitic but how he doesn't think the journalism is anti Semitic so who knows wtf he thinks.

It's a very dramatic accusation. When something very dramatic is argued, you should hold out for more careful evidence. If someone claims, idk, Jessie Ware is Jewish is barely matters. But when you accuse a government of committing eugenics, idk, I want something firmer than the word of a Haaretz reporter trying to convey the results of 35 anonymous interviews with women who mostly don't speak any Hebrew or English.

I agree that more sources are necessary, mordy, but I don't think the evidence on hand is completely and utterly dismissible.

If you don't see how anti-semitism might play into the promotion of this story -- idk.

Israel was also accused of committing genocide in Jenin, mostly on the basis of anonymous reporting and little original research.

If you don't see how you want this story to be not true and you tend to find anti semitism in a lot of things then idk

To be fair, maybe you'd be just as quick to believe such a story written about another first world democracy, like the United States or France or the UK. I doubt it, though.

As I said in the other thread, anti-America Imperialism probably plays a much larger role then a hatred of Jews.

I would believe that the us and the UK would do this so fast you're head would spin.

I would be similarly skeptical of a story reported in a similar way about the United States and I would be similarly confused about how someone could so easily accept it.

xpost

It is very rare for Western democratic governments to engage in long term eugenics programs (though I admit, not unheard of).

Eugenics, no, but there is a long history of Western democratic governments giving drugs, injections and things of that nature to unwitting, often uninformed, participants, who also frequently happen to be in a position of vulnerability (immigrant, poor, black).

You clearly don't live in the US

lets talk about the drugs the US gave to central and South Americans a few decades ago...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tuskegee_syphilis_experiment

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Willowbrook_State_School

http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2012/12/17/121217fa_fact_khatchadourian

xpost State sponsored eugenics is a pretty uncommon thing. We've given all sorts of shit to all sorts of people for all sorts of reasons, but I don't think the US government was ever out to eradicate a people.

I would much more easily believe an accusation of medical ethical infringements done on small groups in limited studies; at a particular institute, or in a particular small city, or on a unit of soldiers. I find it much harder to believe as a broad secret racial eugenics program.

Yeah, that's stupid (not being sarcastic). Why would Israel invite - airlifted, even - in a whole load of immigrants just to try to decimate their numbers? Assuming any of this is accurate, one of your other hypotheses is likely true, or that there was some rogue racist agent.

I pretty much cosign with everything written here: http://elderofziyon.blogspot.com/2013/01/did-israelis-force-contraception-on.html

The idea that doctors - especially in doctors who willingly travel to Ethiopia, people who would be among the most dedicated medical professionals on the planet - would conspire to effectively sterilize black women is simply not plausible.

What you must believe to believe this is just. idk.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doctors'_plot

My guess - and it is only a guess - is that Ethiopian women were generally enthusiastic about the idea of birth control. And as Dr. Hodes says, the idea of injectionable contraception was appealing to them - because they don't have to tell their husbands.

This is the key to understanding the story. The Ethiopian husbands would generally be averse to their wives taking birth control, so they must do it in secret - and the Depo-Provera is by far the best method to keep their husbands from knowing. They simply tell them that they were receiving inoculations or some other excuse.

where is the blogger getting this from

if a "guess" is "key to understanding the story" im not really inclined to give it any more credibility than those "35 anonymous interviews"

I don't get that the fact they would travel to Ethiopia makes it less plausible if their purpose is to sterilise black people. Again, I do think there's something bogus about this.

It's his theory max. I don't know what explains these accusations. I just know that Haaretz's explanation does not make any sense.

Also hard to look to the "elder of Ziyon" for objectivity, but maybe there's something in the name I don't get.

I think the points he makes (with the exception of his theory of the case) are compelling enough that it shouldn't matter who is arguing them.

The exact quote caught my eye too, Max. That theory literally comes out of nowhere, is based on nothing, and is far less credible than what Mordy already dismissed as not-credible.

Like, he could have at least invented an anonymous sources. "Some people say ..."

It's a theory I've seen around. I haven't seen anything compelling to suggest it and haven't been able to do any research that revealed anything beyond Depo being very popular in Ethiopia.

He was theorizing. He's a blogger. It seems honestly speculative to me.

Where is everyone getting the idea that Depo is very popular in Ethiopia?

Maybe this has more information: http://www.jstor.org/stable/3583408

If someone wants to hunt up their alumni jstor account.

Mordy, your arguments were better than this. When the blogger strays into that kind of speculation it lacks credibility the same way aspects of the original story do.

No, it's worse!

I'd try to get that jstor article, but the US might threaten me with 35 years in prison.

Seems relevant too: http://www.jstor.org/stable/27716220

Depo-Provera: Ethical Issues in Its Testing and Distribution
Malcolm Potts and John M. Paxman
Journal of Medical Ethics
Vol. 10, No. 1 (Mar., 1984), pp. 9-20

We've (the US) been pushing birth control in Africa for a long time. It has a huge correlation to improvements in quality of life. (Melinda Gates big project atm too iirc?)